“Nuh uh,” he said. “I haven’t spent an hour giving you a massage so you can lose the glow. Go to sleep.”
So she did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“We need food,” Korsakoff interrupted Boris’ gloomy thoughts.
“And women,” put in Solzhenitsyn jovially.
“Where do you want to eat and play?” Boris responded.
“I’ve heard of a new place in the gypsy quarter,” said Solzhenitsyn. “We should go there and eat borscht and gypsy pussy.”
Boris nodded. If it was to be tonight, he wanted it to be somewhere other than the flat he shared with Oksanna. Her interrogations were as clumsy as ever. Or perhaps he was too old and wary. He had never talked about his business with women. It was too dangerous – for him and for them. But since the day he had realized Oksanna was being brutalized for failing to pump him, he had been feeding her tidbits. Her bruises had healed and not been replaced. Boris hoped that she survived his removal. But sadly, Odéen might execute her out of sheer ruthless spite.
Despite the fact that Oksanna was a spy, Boris had become fond of her. Perhaps he really was too fucking old for this business. Thirty years ago he had been able to think of women as disposable. Probably he would not have noticed if his lover acquired new bruises – except as evidence of infidelity. Now he worried that his mistress would be killed for carrying out her mission to betray him. He would have dismissed her weeks ago if he had not thought that too might be her death sentence. He had grown as soft as fucking butter.
“Dva,” Solzhenitsyn grumbled. “Aren’t you in the mood for Gypsies?”
Boris lumbered to his feet. He pounded his lieutenant on the back. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather have right now,” he said feigning good humor. “Shall we go and see what pleasures await us, my friends?”
The older he got, the harder it was for Boris to ignore his bear. He kept growing sentimental about his associates. Even of these shitheads Solzhenitsyn and Korsakoff. Even he knew he was partying with his own fucking executioners. Odéen liked it that way. How many times had Boris been Odéen’s hitman? More times than he cared to count. He had taken out his predecessor himself. He had shot at point-blank range the tiger who had taught him his job, and with whom he had broken bread, drunk vodka and fucked whores.
Odéen ruled by terror. And what could be more terrifying than the knowledge that your buddies would kill you without a second thought? Even eliminating Solzhenitsyn and Korsakoff would only defer the Boss’ sentence. All Boris could fucking do was plod on bearlike until the trigger was pulled. There was some bitter comfort in the knowledge that when Boris Chekhov lay in a Kiev gutter, the entire rotten edifice that was Vladimir the Enforcer would fall.
* * *
Boris Chekhov had always been a generous lover. But in the last few months he had become positively lavish. Just about the time when her questions had finally borne fruit. And yet, he had not really changed. He told her things that satisfied Odéen, but did not seem to her to be important. At least there had not been another beating – as if it were her fault that Boris did not trust anyone.
But now he was almost certainly dead. He had not returned home for four days. He had left to go to work as he always did, kissing her goodbye with his usual hearty good humor. Considering how he made his living, he was a kind man. He had told her once to take whatever she wanted from the flat when she wished to leave him. She had protested, as she was supposed to do, that she would never leave him.
His smile had been cheerful when he had shown her the small cavity in the strange alcove that led nowhere. He had berated her loudly during his demonstration, and even pretended to beat her as he complained. The little safe had been empty that day. Later, it had begun to fill with money. American dollars. Euros. She had never taken so much as a banknote from it. But she had also not told Odéen about it as she was supposed to do.
She took out her largest shopping bag and her big leather purse. She always wore the sables that Boris had given her. Always put on makeup and fixed her hair. Always put on some of the jewelry he had given her. Today she settled on heavy earrings, a necklace and a couple of bracelets. She dumped the rest of her collection underneath the false bottom of her handbag. She filled the shopping bag with the money from Boris’ cache and covered it with empty carrier bags, wondering how much of what she was doing was being observed.
Her driver was waiting to take her to the shops. Just as if everything was normal. She asked him to drive her to the beauty salon she patronized and to return to take her to the shops to buy dinner. Yacov didn’t raise an eyebrow at this. He was used to her routines. He left her outside the beauty parlor.
“I think today, I will be a redhead,” she told him as he opened her door.
Yacov laughed. “I don’t know if Boris Chekhov likes red hair,” he said. “Best leave it blonde.”
Oksanna tittered. She patted her hair and went into the spa while Yacov drove away, promising to return in two hours. She had no appointment? She must have mistaken the day. When was the next available slot to have Ivanka give her a full treatment? For such a good customer as Madame, Ivanka would be devastated to disappoint her. Would Thursday suit Madame? It was Oksanna’s own mistake. She would certainly come back on Thursday.
She went back out into the street and walked along briskly until she came to the subway. She went two stops and got out and visited a public restroom. When she came out she was unrecognizable in a threadbare cloth coat. Her hair was covered with a hideous, multicolored knitted cap. She moved awkwardly, bent over by the bulging carrier bags she clutched in both hands. No one gave the worn old woman a second glance as she made her slow way down the street and boarded a bus which took her to the outskirts of Kiev.
It was a long walk to the block of flats where her children lived. And it took longer because she had to stay in character. She trudged slowly along with her lumpy carrier bags. Just another ancient drudge wearily returning home. With every step she expected to feel a bullet in her head. But she got to the shabby tower without incident. Perhaps her shielded underpants had succeeded in deceiving the GPS locators. Perhaps.
A gang of feral teenagers yelled at her. They thought they were being funny asking an ungainly Babushka to share the contents of her grubby bags. She did not raise her head. Their laughter pursued her into the lobby. It was spotless, although the intercoms dangled from their wires.
The elevators were not working. Had they ever worked? Oksanna climbed the stairs to the ninth floor, still clutching her bags. She knocked on the door of Apartment 9537. The voices inside instantly hushed. The door opened on a chain and a lined face peered out. Eyes blinked. The door opened and was locked behind Oksanna.
She knelt on the floor and opened her arms. Three sets of little arms wound themselves about her.
“Mama,” was whispered in her ears over and over in accents of joy. She had made it. For the present, she and her babies were safe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It had been tempting to snuggle beside Nicole after she had fallen asleep. But Lars remembered in time that she still hadn’t agreed to a real marriage – just to try making love. He had covered her and picked up what few clothes he had removed and gone to his own room. He slept surprisingly well with no return of his dreams about Annalise.
In the morning, he woke refreshed. Matteo was standing beside his bed looking intently at him.
“Yes, son?”
“Is it time for breakfast, Señor Lars?”
Lars looked at the window. The sun came up all at once in the Caribbean. One moment it was dark and the next it was day. Since the sun was up, it was already past seven. “Are you hungry?”
Matteo bounced. “Starving!”
“Get your clothes on, sport. I’ll find something for you.”
While Matteo was engulfing slices of papaya and peanut butter toast, it was really only a matter of a few keystrokes to set in motion a comprehensive search for Stan Upshaw and Al
icia Hastings. The sword bearers of the Eldest could get to work finding that dipshit and Nicole’s mother’s death certificate.
After his meal, Matteo was quite willing to go down to the shore. The beach was littered with scraps of seaweed tossed ashore overnight. As Lars had suspected, Matteo regarded using the rake to make them into a giant pile of green and black fronds as the utmost in fun. Lars wanted to make sure that Nicole didn’t have to walk over the slimy strands to swim.
“What can we do with this, Señor?” Matteo asked excitedly. He stirred the big heap he had made with the tines of his rake.
“If we leave it here, above the water line, it’ll dry out. Then we can put it in a fire, and it will burn all the colors in the rainbow,” Lars told him.
“Cool. But Mom won’t let me light fires,” complained Matteo. “She thinks it’s dangerous.”
“It can be,” Lars said. He concealed his smile. Firelings were all budding pyromaniacs. Very few of them actually turned into criminals. But a fascination with the beauty and wonder of fire went with the territory. “Your mother is a wise woman. I hope that you don’t plan to disobey her.”
The boy was looking at him out the corner of his eye. Lars realized he was trying to figure out how to play one parent against the other. He wasn’t going to succumb to this particular game, but it made him feel like a real father. How often had he chuckled at the attempts of one of the many Lindorm sprats to execute exactly this trick? Hell, he and his brothers had probably tried it too.
“The rule is,” Lars told the boy calmly, “That you may not light a fire unless there is a grown-up who has given permission and is with you.” He held Matteo’s eyes with his own. “Do you understand this rule?”
Matteo nodded.
“Tell me what the rule is.”
Matteo sulkily drew in the sand with his rake. “I’m not to light fires unless I get permission and there’s a grown-up.”
Lars concentrated on the meaning and not the sullenness in the boy’s voice. Undoubtedly he had derailed some cunning plan. Now all he had to do was derail the ones he did not yet suspect.
“What do boys call their stepfathers in Swedish?” Matteo continued with elaborate casualness. He turned his attention to some debris he had churned up in the dry sand.
Lars had a lump in his throat. “Far,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“Father.”
“Should I call you that?”
“If you wish. I would like that.”
“How long will the seaweed take to dry out, Far?” the boy asked.
“Depends if you turn it over or not. And whether or not it rains. Heaped up like that, the outside will dry in a few hours, but inside it will be hot and steamy and it will stay like that for weeks.”
“How hot?”
“Hot enough that lots of animals will make a nest in it. So you have to choose. Do you want to spread it out so it dries and we can use it in a fire? Or do you want to make a big stack and see what we find when we open it up?”
“What kind of animals, Far? I saw a mouse this big yesterday.” Matteo held his hands apart about six inches.
“It won’t be a mammal. It’ll be an insect.”
“What kind of insects? Big ones?”
“I don’t know. Beetles, probably. Are you ready for more food, Matt?”
“Yeah.” Matteo took off running up the beach, abandoning his rake.
“Not so fast, son. We have to put our tools way.”
* * *
She had overslept again. Nicole sat up in bed stretching. She felt wonderful. Sort of floaty. There was no sign of Lars. Not even of his clothes. He was gone. She padded to the bathroom, stepping cautiously, but it was still a hermit crab-free zone. Lars had obviously done his job well. Nicole was used to her boy’s obstinacy. Maybe Lars was right, and Matteo did need a father.
All boys needed a father. Girls too. Her heart had broken when her Daddy had died. He had slipped while he was installing insulation in a condo tower. His safety harness had separated and he had fallen fifty floors to the ground. Mom had refused to let ten-year-old Nicole look at him. At the time, it had felt cruel. Now she knew Mom had been sparing her feelings.
She had even been happy when Mom had married Stan Upshaw. Stan had been a good stepfather. Or it had seemed so at the time. Ought she to worry about Lars and Matteo? No. Lars was straightforward and he wasn’t trying to charm Matt. In fact he was pretty strict.
Ever since Felipe had transformed her into a dragoness, Nicole had trusted her intuition. She felt a pleasant fizzing in her veins whenever she was around Lars. She liked making love with him. No question there. But she also felt a bone deep anxiety that she was just deluding herself. Could she trust her intuition in this?
She had lived so long with no confidante except her two aged aunts that she had grown used to being completely honest with herself. She was drawn to Lars. He made her feel things she had not felt since she was a young teenager. She supposed, that despite having grown older, part of her was still a tentative adolescent. She had never been on a date. Never had a boyfriend. Had not had any but the most businesslike of conversations with any man but Lars. How could she trust in fate, as he urged her to do? Wasn’t Felipe fate as well?
It was hard to see why a man who looked like Lars would want to tie himself to someone like her. He seemed fond of Matteo. And her son was blossoming with Lars’ attention. But she had to remember that she was no svelte beauty, like the women on the pages of the magazines she had in her room. No matter how alluring Lars made her feel.
Hadn’t she thought that Felipe was Prince Charming when she first met him? She had been halfway to infatuation by the time he came into her room and forced himself on her. Maybe if she had not led him on, none of this would’ve happened. And perhaps Lars had some ulterior motive that she had not yet discovered. It was probably just her ignorance and stupidity that made her unable to figure it out.
She put on a pot of coffee and took her mug out onto the veranda. It was another beautiful day in paradise. The sun shone out of a sky so blue it seemed it would never rain again. Lars and Matteo were down at the beach playing some game on the sand.
After a while, Nicole realized they were raking up seaweed. And then they were examining the pile – the curly black head and the crisp golden one almost touching. Nicole sighed. Her boy so needed a man in his life. It was good that Lars was interested enough to spend time with him. A little attention was better than nothing.
Lars had said that she could have all the time there was to choose. If it was a genuine offer, then she had time. If it was a trap, it was hard to see what it could be until it opened before her feet. Right now, the best thing she could do was to go make breakfast. She had it almost ready when they came noisily up the stairs from the beach. Matteo was a whirling dervish laughing so hard he could hardly walk straight.
“Knock, knock,” cried Matteo as he pushed into the kitchen.
“Who’s there?” Lars responded.
“Pierre.”
“Pierre who?”
“Pierre, you smell,” gasped Matteo doubling over with amusement.
Nicole chuckled. Matteo didn’t always understand knock-knock jokes, but he certainly liked to tell them.
“Good morning,” said Lars. His big hands on Matteo’s shoulders turned him towards his mother.
“Good morning, Mom,” Matteo echoed.
“Good morning, to you both. Go wash your hands, Matteo. I’m almost ready to dish up,” Nicole said.
Lars followed Matteo. They must’ve been famished for they were back in nothing flat. Nicole set bacon and pancakes in front of them and turned back to the counter for the coffee pot. Lars held her chair for her and eased it under her when she took her place. He sat down and ostentatiously put his napkin on his lap. Matteo hastily unfolded his and followed suit.
“This is a real treat,” said Lars. He poured syrup on his pancakes.
“You were both up
early,” Nicole said. “Did you go swimming?”
“No, we raked the beach and picked up shells,” said Matteo with his mouth full.
“The sea around here is pristine, but every night there’s a fresh load of seaweed on the sand.” Lars poured cream in his coffee and stirred.
“We made a huge pile,” Matteo cried. He waved his arms in the air. “We are going to let it cook, until it’s full of insects.”
Dear Lord, but at least Lars was going to be dealing with the pile of insect-laden seaweed and not her. “I don’t want that in the house, Matteo,” she warned. She flicked her eyes sideways at Lars.
“You heard your mom,” Lars said. His voice was pleasant but unyielding.
Matteo stuffed more pancake into his mouth and nodded happily. He chewed and swallowed. He took a big slurp of milk and said, “Can I learn to sail? Far said I could.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows at him. She shook her head. “I’m not going to allow that,” she said softly. Now what had she said? Matteo looked as though she had slapped him. And although there was not a hair ruffled on Lars’ sleek head, his chiseled features were as rigid as if she had broken his heart.
“I know I’m old-fashioned,” she said softly, “But Matteo knows he’s not to call adults by their given names.”
“But I didn’t,” protested Matt. “Señor Lars said I could call him Far.”
Nicole looked an inquiry at Lars. His face was crimson. “Why ‘Far’?” she asked.
“It’s what fathers are called in Swedish,” Matteo said importantly.
“I beg your pardon,” said Nicole. “I misheard you.” Lars was looking sheepish. But also as though he expected a blow. He really wanted Matteo to call him father. She didn’t know if by agreeing she was setting up Matteo for heartbreak, but it was probably too late to prevent it. She nodded. “That was kind of you,” she said. “My mistake, Matteo.”
“So can I go sailing?” pleaded Matt.
“I guess you know all about sailing,” Nicole said to Lars.
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